Field experiments

Field experiments

1. A field experiment has two features that distinguish it from a laboratory experiment: 1. It takes place in the subject’s natural surroundings, rather than in an artificial laboratory environment. 2. Those involved are typically unaware that they’re the subjects of an experiment, meaning there isn’t the risk of the Hawthorne Effect.

   • The researcher will manipulate one or more of the variables in the situation, in order to see how it effects the participant. For example, in Rosenhan’s pseudopatient experiment, researchers feigned schizophrenic symptoms in order to gain admission into 12 California mental hospitals. Once inside, they ceased to feign the symptom, and acted normally. Nonetheless, staff treated them as if they were mentally ill. None of the researchers were discovered. This suggested that it wasn’t the patients’ behaviour that led to them being treated as unwell, but the label that came with the diagnosis of schizophrenia. The study shows the value of field experiments. They’re more natural, valid and realistic, and they avoid the artificiality of laboratory experiments.
     • However, the more realistic the situation, the less control the researcher will have over the variables. If so, they cannot be certain that the causes identified are correct. Some critics also argue that field experiments are unethical, as they involve carrying out an experiment on subjects without their knowledge or consent.

2. Unlike other experiment, the comparative method is carried out only in the mind of the sociologist. It is, essentially, a ‘thought experiment’, and doesn’t involve the researcher actually experimenting on real people at all. However, like other experimental methods, it is designed to discover cause-and-effect relationships, and work as follows:

   • Step one: Indentify two groups of people that are alike in all major respect, except for the one variable the researcher is interested in.
   • Step two: Then compare the two groups to see if this one differences between them has any effect.

3. Durkheim’s study of suicide is an example of the comparative method. His hypothesis was that low levels of integration of individuals into social groups caused high rates of suicide. He argued that Catholicism produced higher levels of integration than Protestantism, and he thus predicted that Protestants would have a higher suicide rate than Catholics. He then tested this prediction by comparing the suicide rates of Catholics and Protestants. The two groups were similar in all other aspects. His prediction was supported by official statistics, which showed Catholics to have lower suicide rates. In seeking to discover cause-and-effect relationships, the comparative method has three advantages: it avoids artificiality, it can be used to study past events, and it poses no ethical problems. However, the comparative method gives the researcher next to no control over variables, leaving them very uncertain as to whether a thought experiment has really discovered the cause of something.